From: goer@ellis.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) Subject: Re: Is Linux a viable OS for a stable multiuser unix system, not just a hobbiest's Unix box? Date: 12 Feb 1993 15:56:51 GMT
eric@tantalus.nrl.navy.mil (Eric Youngdale) writes:
>>Depends... if your applications require > 16 Meg real RAM and SCSI
>>drivers, go for the SPARC. If you are going to add gigabyte storage,
>>use the SPARC as woll. If your plans are not as ambitious, I'd say
>>Linux is a viable alternative.
>
> I feel that this should probably be qualified a bit. First of all,
>the current scsi drivers are quite capable with dealing with machines that have
>more than 16Mb. There is a slight overhead as the disk blocks are copied to
>memory locations < 16Mb, but other than a barely noticable performance hit, it
>will work just fine.
I don't think that the original poster was interested in relatively incidental
performance issues. Might be wrong, but I had the impression that the system
was going to be used lightly, and not for serious number-crunching. If the sys-
tems are to be multi-user platforms integrated into a network, I'd say that the
critical issues are
1) Whether Linux has fairly stable kernel and libraries
2) Whether Linux, like any other good UNIX implementation, will with-
stand weeks of light multi-user, networked use, without showing
crashes, memory leaks, or otherwise bizarre or undesirable behavior
Perhaps, like I said, I misread the original query. It just seems to me that
we're wandering off into issues that the original poster wasn't concerned with.
---Richard L. Goerwitz goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet goer@midway.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer